


Luke's Redemption

by youreyestheyglow



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Redemption, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-20
Updated: 2015-04-20
Packaged: 2018-03-24 22:10:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3786070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youreyestheyglow/pseuds/youreyestheyglow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Matthew is taken to May Castellan's house as part of a volunteer program to help the elderly, he discovers a bit about his long-dead past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Luke's Redemption

Matthew had no idea how it happened, but the man who called himself Mr. Wings, of the Volunteer Elderly Assistance Program (VEAP), had convinced his mother that he, yes, him, Matthew – yeah, the kid on the verge of dropping out of high school, do you have another Matthew in the house? – was a great fit for this old lady who lived half a town away. 

Matthew had no idea how it happened, but his mom – Miss "No More Extra-Curriculars Until You Bring Your Grades Up Young Man" (Miss NMECUYBYGUYM) – had agreed. 

Matthew had no idea how it happened, but he was in the car with Mr. Wings, and pulling into the driveway of a déjà-vu-inducing house and he was getting really tired of not knowing how things were happening. 

Mr. Wings had chattered the entire ride over, presumably on Bluetooth – voices answered, but Matthew himself didn't speak a word. Matthew thought it was Bluetooth, because cell phones couldn't talk on their own, and the flip phone had been closed, so it couldn't have been on speaker. 

"Her name is May Castellan and, like I said, she's a little bit confused. Be good to her. She's lived a hard life."

"How do you know?"

The sadness that invaded Mr. Wings's face was way too personal to mean anything but – "Did you know her?"

He ignored Matthew and rang the doorbell. 

The woman who answered the door was pretty, in that weird spot between middle-aged and elderly, and out of her mind. 

"Luke! My boy!" She cried joyfully, swooping in and engulfing him in a hug. 

Matthew was pretty sure this was an invasion of space, but Mr. Wings didn't do a damn thing about it, so he stood there while Mrs. Castellan exclaimed: 

"I knew you'd come back, I told everyone you would, but they didn't believe me -" she switched over to Mr. Wings, embracing him tearfully, murmuring her thanks. 

Mr. Wings untangled himself. "He'll be here twice a week for a few hours, okay?" 

"It's better than nothing," she said, patting his shoulders. She turned to smile at Matthew. "Come in, there are cookies."

Matthew had no idea how it happened, but he was sitting at a kitchen table with a glass of milk and a plate of burnt cookies. 

She asked him about work, and was shocked to find out that he was in high school – "Again?" "I've never been before." "Oh, that's right, you left before you could go." – and he figured out that her son, Luke, had run away. 

He also figured out that she’d been making cookies and sandwiches every day, for years, waiting for Luke to come home.

Maybe his purpose here was to convince her to stop wasting so much money on cookies and sandwiches.

That train of thought derailed faster than he could say _what the fuck_ when she brought out a picture of her beloved Luke, because _he knew that face_.

“Where’d he go to school” led to nothing – he would be around forty years old today, and he’d barely gotten any schooling in before he ran away. “Who was his dad” only got him a sad smile and a sigh and “You know your own father.” Other normal questions – where does he live, where does he work, what does he look like now – were useless. She was very insistent that he himself was Luke.

Until she threw out a – “Your nice friends stopped by. Annabeth and Percy. They’re the ones who wanted me to have help around the house.”

And for whatever reason, those names clicked. Luke, Annabeth, Percy. There was something missing – another name – Percy shouldn’t be there, there should be a different name there, and _he didn’t know them anyway so why did he care?_

“Have they seen him recently?” He asked casually.

“No, no. But you’re here now. So it’s all right.”

He spent the rest of the evening teasing out information as subtly as he could. Direct questions confused May; she would ask why he was asking questions about himself. But If he said it casually – “Wait, how old was I when I met Annabeth?” – he could get an answer. He felt a little guilty about it. He was purposefully misleading a senile old woman. But it didn’t feel like lying. It didn’t feel like lying at all.

 

Matthew didn’t mind going over to May Castellan’s house, not when every time he went he noticed something new – the cookies were improving, the sandwiches were freshly made. He got to go into Luke’s room; according to May, it was his anyway. He found things that made no sense, notes about monsters and Greek gods, all in notebooks covered in decades worth of dust. And it was all familiar. All of it. He could make sense of it, even though it had clearly been written by a dyslexic kid with ADHD, and he was neither of those things. It didn’t matter. He knew what Luke was talking about.

 

Matthew got angry. Angry on Luke’s behalf. His father had abandoned him – that deserved anger. His mother was a little insane and entirely alone – that deserved anger.

But it passed.

He couldn’t be angry at May. She was insane, but she wasn’t cruel. Maybe it helped that he had another home to go to, and that he was a teenager who wasn’t entirely dependent on her, but he couldn’t be angry at her. That was too much.

And Luke’s father – well.

Luke’s father.

Luke’s father was named Hermes.

 

Matthew did research.

He looked up the Greek gods, read the Wikipedia entry, and found the entry on the afterlife. More specifically, he found the entry on rebirth, on the people who were reborn so they could try for the Fields of Elysium.

He found the entry on Hermes.

 

Matthew went to May Castellan’s house.

She understood that other visitors were not Luke. She knew that. She didn’t make cookies and sandwiches every day; only when Matthew was coming.

She still called him Luke.

 

When Matthew dialed Mr. Wings’s number and said, “Who am I?” Mr. Wings said, “I think we need to talk.”

 

“You’re the reincarnation of my son, Luke.”

 

It wasn’t as much of a shock as it should’ve been.

What _was_ shocking was what he’d done in his past life.

He couldn’t imagine – he couldn’t even begin to consider how much hatred he’d felt, in his past life. How much hatred had it taken to override his love for Annabeth? How much hatred had it taken to raise Kronus? How had he –?

He asked Hermes to take him to her. To Annabeth.

Hermes acquiesced, after a while. He refused to bring him directly to Annabeth’s house, but he asked her to meet them in front of the Empire State Building.

Hermes chaperoned him all the way there, and stood off to the side, looking vaguely threatening, while Luke talked to Annabeth and Percy and Thalia.

Because of course Percy was there – he wouldn’t let Annabeth go to meet Luke alone – and because of course Thalia was there.

Luke apologized.

Annabeth and Thalia forgave him. Instantly. Thalia cried a little. Annabeth cried a lot. Percy looked a little more reluctant, and Luke was pretty sure Percy only forgave him for Annabeth’s sake. That was okay. Luke had put the entire goddamn world in danger. He couldn’t blame Percy for being angry.

Annabeth and Thalia looked old. They weren’t, of course. They were only in their thirties. But when he looked at them, he saw younger people. He still couldn’t make much of his memories – they were pretty blurry, kinda choppy, mostly not there at all – but he knew what Annabeth and Thalia had looked like. And he knew what Percy had looked like. He knew those things.

 

When he walked into May Castellan’s house, he hugged her and said “Hi, mom.”


End file.
